The present invention relates to integrated circuit memory, and particularly to low-power integrated circuit memory which is designed to operate at very low voltages.
The present invention will be discussed in the context of a low-power electronic data module, which provides read/write access to an integrated circuit memory using a one-wire bus. However, it should be appreciated that a wide variety of other integrated circuit and system implementations can advantageously incorporate the claimed innovative teachings.
The present invention provides a RAM/ROM hybrid for a portion of the memory array. An innovative memory cell is used, which can operate as a static RAM, or which can be programmed to operate as a ROM cell. Thus users who need the extra security permitted by ROM encoding can have this capability, while users who do not need ROM encoding can use off-the-shelf parts as RAM only.